DEMONSTRATION ON FIRE-MAKING APPLIANCES. 51
tinder, the other end terminates in a flat knob. When the box is held in
one hand, the piston in position is driven by a smart blow on the knob by
the other hand ; this of course compresses the air in the cavity in the box,
and great heat is suddenly generated. By withdrawing the rod quickly the
heated tinder is brought into contact with the oxygen of the air outside, and
it ignites, or should do under favourable conditions.
We now come to the Percussion Meliloti, by which we mean the general
use of flint and steel, with their many and varied forms and ramifications.
For the earliest examples of the Flint-and-Steel we must go back to the
Stone-age where flint and iron pyrites took the place of the more modern
form ; indeed, I have heard of cases where iron pyrites has been used for
getting fire even during the present century. In different countries we get
variation in the forms of the steels, and various silicate stones taking the place
of the flint. The box or receptacle for the tinder and the flint and stone also
vary geographically, as also does the tinder used to arrest and hold the
precious spark.
I will now describe a few of these from various parts of the world, taking
it for granted that we all know that this method of getting fire is simply that
the hard flint, or allied stone, by being brought sharply into contact with a
piece of soft steel or iron, strikes off a particle of the latter, which being
heated by the force employed burns in the oxygen of the air, and that this
spark falling upon very dry tinder ignites it, and thus furnishes the desired
fire.
Some of the most primitive of these forms in my collection are curiously
enough from India. In one case the steel is a rough fragment of iron, the
flint a rude flake of agate, the tinder is the silky lining of the seed vessel of
the Bombix malabaricus, and the tinder box is the hallowed fruit of the
Borassus Fan-palm.
In another the tinder box is actually made from the coccoon of the
Tussore silk moth, and the flint is from an old "Brown Bess" gun of the
Mutiny times. In Northern India chalcedony in rough lumps does duty for
the flints in company with almost impossible pieces of hard white iron.
Several examples from Thibet show the typical pouch-shaped tinder case
having the steel fixed as a rim to the lower edge. This form is common in
Thibet, Persia, China, Kashmir, and North Africa, and we actually have a
modification of it from Norway, Germany, and our own country, England.
From the Punjab, India, we have the native's pipe and tobacco, with
flint and steel and tinder, all together in a rough canvas bag, while in the
West Indies we find a cow's horn doing duty as a tinder box.
To come down to modern civilized times we have from Germany and
Scandinavia, tinder boxes cut from solid blocks of wood ; their English
representatives were of joined wood. In Holland, to-day, tinder boxes and
flints and steel are sold in the streets for a few centas each : the former are
small rounded tubular boxes of copper or brass, but are not to be compared
with their artistic ancestors of the 17th century, of which we have several
before us. We also have many forms of pocket tinder boxes, some being of
silver, having the steel attached to one of the outside edges.
The typical English tinder-box is of circular form, made of thin iron,
sometimes japanned, more often not. The tinder, which was of some charred